Men justified their oppression of women by claiming that it was right and good that men should rule the world, because men were far more intelligent, capable and sensible than women. (They were also saying similar things about African slaves). To counter these claims, Mary Wollstonecraft, had to argue that women were every bit as intelligent and sensible as men

Then, in the 19th century, male scientists asserted that as women had smaller brains than men, they could not be as intelligent, and anyway women were far too emotional to make rational decisions. Feminists had a difficult job contradicting these claims of male superiority.

Yet in spite of this, using the arguments of Mary Wollstonecraft, feminists won women the right to be educated, and in the early 20th Century, the right to vote. In the 1960s the Women’s Liberation Movement sprang up and eventually won women the legal right to equal opportunities. Unfortunately many people in this movement took the arguments of Mary Wollstonecraft to extremes, claiming that not only were women as intelligent and capable as men but exactly the same as men in every other way. Unfortunately many of these extreme claims not only defied all logic and evidence, they created a barrier for further female empowerment

It's relatively easy to establish that men and women are as intelligent as each other; IQ tests show that overall, there's not much difference between men and women. Women are also as competent as men in professions like science, engineering, medicine, the law and politics, when they are allowed into these professions. But it would be silly to suggest that men and women are equal in everything. Physically, the average man is bigger and stronger than the average woman. In jobs that require physical strength, women are definitely at a disadvantage. It's the same in sport. Men can outperform most women because of their greater strength

The reason why a male’s body is physically bigger and stronger than a woman’s is that men’s bodies produce far more of the hormone testosterone than females do. This hormone also has another effect; it makes men far more aggressive and competitive than women. All of this should be completely obvious, but it is disputed by some Feminists, who claim that women are just as aggressive and competitive as men. Some will even go as far as saying that women are just as violent as men, in spite of the fact that over 99% of all violence committed by humans, in wars, genocide and crime, is perpetrated by men.

There's a reason why some Feminists dispute the fact that men are more aggressive and competitive than women. If men have ruled our world throughout recorded history by being this way, then there seems no alternative to their continued dominance. Women have no hope of ever gaining power for themselves. But if you assert that women are every bit as capable as men of such behaviour, there's a chance that they might succeed in a fight for power some time in the future. The trouble with this argument is that it flies in the face of all the evidence we have that men and women are very different from each other.

Women are only going to be truly empowered by taking control of the political system.

How Dogmatic Feminism Undermines The Sisterhood

In the 1980s scientists began to study the human brain in greater detail and discovered that the brains of men and women were different. They already knew about the advantages testosterone gave men, but in their studies they also observed that women had better social and language skills than men

Some feminists seized on this and created the slogan, “the sisterhood is powerful”. The idea was that women, with their superior social and communication skills, would be able to create a formidable sisterhood and ally with each other to end discrimination . Unfortunately, since the 1980s, when this slogan was created, women have failed to create a noticeably powerful sisterhood. Why is this?

The problem is the belief that men and women are the same. It creates the idea that women should be able to learn to be as competitive and aggressive as men if only they would try harder and throw off their conditioning. It's this belief that is setting women up for failure. Just as it is unrealistic for women to try to compete against men in physical strength, it is equally unrealistic for women to be as competitive and aggressive.

They are wired differently. They don't have the testosterone which produces such behaviour. It's true there are some women who can learn to be very competitive, like there are women who can do weight training and become stronger than the average man, but it's unusual, as is the sight of a cut-throat career woman willing to trample on people to achieve her goals

The problem for women, is that if they want to be successful and have power, the only role models they have are men. Unfortunately, women on the whole are far more caring and loving people than men. The patriarchy has reacted to this by claiming that this is what makes women ‘weak’. It then goes on to claim that if you want power, then you have to be aggressive and ruthless - just like a man.

To be fair, this is what history seems to show us. Only the most competitive men become leaders. So the message is that if women want power, they have to be the same as these men. Some women have followed this advice; there are many cases of ruthless female politicians and businesswomen, but it does not alter the fact that aggression and competitiveness do not come naturally to women. It will always be a minority of women who can display these traits

Sisterhood

There are many examples of women working together peacefully to achieve a goal, most of them unrecorded and unsung because it's violence that makes a headline on the news. One that did hit the news for some time was the Greenham Common peace camp in the 1980s that protested against US cruise missiles being sited in Britain

The female protesters made an early decision not to allow men in their peace camps, which allowed them to form a powerful sisterhood. They remained in the camp until the decision was made to remove Cruise missiles from British soil. Unfortunately when the cold war ended, the peace camps disbanded and the experiences of the Greenham Common women, seem to be forgotten now

This means that with so few role models for a powerful sisterhood, ambitious women tend to go down the tried and tested road of behaving like a ruthless male, instead of joining with other women to empower themselves and achieve their goals through co-operation

The picture is not all bad. The increase in the numbers of businesswomen and professional females has seen women begin to outnumber males in some companies and professions and in the process begun to feminise them. Often, this means that a company is run co-operatively and utilises women’s superior language and social skills. This benefits the female employees but puts males at a distinct disadvantage. The same may happen to patriarchal political parties; if women begin to outnumber men in a political party, they may also end up feminising it.

The path to female empowerment, at present, seems to be that a small minority of women to learn how to be as aggressive and competitive as men, and become businesswomen and politicians. Some of these women go as far as acting like a dominatrix in a femdom fantasy. When enough of these women enter these patriarchal organizations, they can begin feminise them. This allows more feminine women, who don't want to act and behave like substitute men, into these organizations.

They thrive, and place the men at a disadvantage. It's a difficult and tortuous path to female empowerment, especially for the ground-breaking women who have to fight their way into an all male environment. But perhaps in time, when we have organizations that are completely feminised, it may inspire women to create other feminized organizations from scratch, without the need for an interim stage of women having to act and behave like men

Eventually, we may see a society where women’s social and communication skills will be more valued than men’s competitive and aggressive instincts, It will be a more harmonious, co-operative and caring society.

Comments

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Author

William Bond 4 years agofrom England

Thank you That Grrl.

Laura Brown 4 years agofrom Barrie, Ontario, Canada

Pretty awesome post. You gave me some new insight, new points I hadn't considered before.

your name 4 years ago

such a sensitive man. aww

Author

William Bond 5 years agofrom England

You say you emailed me on facebook. I haven't received one from Atlas Lonestar, did you use another name?

Author

William Bond 5 years agofrom England

Thank you Lonestar for your support, I can't remember why I didn't respond to James Alpha's message, perhaps I was sorting out other things at the time.

Yes, with the terrible record men have in ruling our world, with wars, genocide, slavery, oppression and the growing gap between rich and poor. Why would any sensible person want men in any position of power. The reality is that if we want to live in a more caring and loving world we need caring and loving women ruling our world. Not only for the sake of women but for men as well.

Atlas Lonestar 5 years ago

Dear James Alpha

You claim that you feel uncomfortable at the idea of feminizing men and the male society and civilization as a whole because you stated that you believe that both masculinity and feminitity should work together. It remains common knowledge that throughout history men along with male patriarchal society have been trying to do exactly this and have only been able to accomplish this by subjugating and oppressing the female. Within a patriarchal structure the sexes do work together as you say but in dominant and subordinate roles, men naturally dominate all exsiting structures within society while women are subordinated into motherhood and servitude to men and our purpose reduced merely to reproduction alone. A perfect example of this are the polarities of Yin and Yang, light and dark. Women are seen as having all the negative primary attributes while men are seen as having all the positive primary attributes. However, these concepts were created by men without the guidance nor opinions of women. Concepts such as this are the male's interpretation of the sexes while women have merely accepted such concepts throughout the ages. Men appear to resemble the the attributes of darkness and negatively more so than women. I even question whether or not such stereotypical concepts should continue to be looked upon, for they seem to blind people and keep them in a narrow frame of mind. If masculinity is based on destruction which it has proven to be than it needs to be controlled, when Mother Nature uses destruction it is always used under her control in a way only she understands. In spite of men's religions, philosophies, politics, and morality he has failed to bring peace and equality not only between the sexes but also between humanity and animalkind, and human civilization and nature.

I know for a fact that William is not saying that all men are evil nor is he making them out to be, it however seems that whenever the evils of men's actions (as a collective) throughout history are acknowledged, men such as yourself have a tendency to feel deeply intimatdated and threatened by the facts, you begin to feel uncomfortable and think you are being discriminated against when in reality women alone have suffered such discrimination for centuries, we have suffered horrors that are unique to our sex that the collective consciousness of men are not able to comprehend the wounds that they have brought upon womenkind until they are brought to face it. And when that time comes they run from it and hide behind the ass of equality. Men had centuries of time to bring about true equality as the rulers of cilvilization and with all the intellectual resources at their disposal such as philosophy, science, etc men still chose to oppress and subjugate women, and judge them as being inferior to men. You claim that men alone have been the one's to fight for rights, that is simply because it was of their choosing, men chose to suppress 50% of the population by keeping women as well as themselves chained to these ridiculous gender roles, though women supported it men are the ones that are primarily to blame for their insistance on continuing such degrading traditions. Also there was a time when women fought and died alongside men as warriors, with technology and human enhancement such a time could and will one day come to pass, as of now we are in the beginning stages.

You are right about there being a great deal of problems in this world as of today however, I know for a fact that we are not going to have thousands or millions of years in the future if we continue on about our damn business raping and exploiting the earth and living within a patriarchal society and way of thinking. It's a fact of life James, that people are going to abuse the system women are no different, they abuse the system in different ways for different purposes; domestic violence, rape, and murder charges against men are going to happen, it is inevitable no matter how near perfect the law and justice system is capable of being even if we had such a system it would still happen much like rape but to a lesser degree. That is reality.

You claim that feminists deny that female to male violence occures, as a matter of fact I know that it does occur particularly on an emotional level and I am a feminist-matriarchalist and am considered one of the most radical of feminists, most feminists would be as intimidated by me as any MRA would be, but this is who I am. I have no problem in acknowledging that such violence against men does happen, however you will get nowhere by bashing feminism or feminists in general, if anything it would only prove that you are more interested in blaming femininsm and demonizing it rather than trying to solve these problems. Feminism along with every organization has its imperfections and its flaws, yet so does the government, so does politics, so does religion, you can demonize just about everything in society and put a conspiracy theory behind it, but I assure you when you look at the bigger picture feminism is at the very least less than a problem, and is at the moment the only support and protection women have though it needs a great deal of improvement.

What would be wrong with feminizing culture? What could possibly be wrong with trying to live at one with nature, with having less violence, with there being more love, compassion, generousity, cooperation, sensitivity, creativeity, and a less stressful life? Yes power will be given to women, in order for us having any hope of one day having a true egalitarian society women must weld power, we must know dominance, socially, polically, spiritually, and religiously, and the responsibility that comes with it. We must recreate society, and tear down the civilization that we know today least we perish; and how would it be posssible without the cultural influences, philosophies, and leadership of women does one accomplish an egalitarian society? Without the contribution of women this so called egalitarian socity would merely be the philosophical theories and assumptions of men with nothing more than good intent, which is bound to be corrupted.

Matriarchal society is an egalitarian society, they are two words with essentially the same meaning, of course you will not see this in the dictionary however there is archeological evidence that Matriarchies were what we would consider egalitarian, however this is very controversial and most would disagree which is expected for obvious reasons. A Matriarchy nor even a female supremacist society does not need to indicate that men will for certain be oppressed, there is a chance that it will but there is no guarantee. Such a society has never before existed within written history; your beliefs that if such a society were to ever be, men would end up in cages is a statement of fear. You and others like you would much prefer to live in a world that is patriarchal, where men dominate society relentlessly, a world where politics, religion, government, even science if filled up to the brim with death and corruption because it is the world that your most familiar to you, one that you know well enough to survive in, in such a case it is difficult for most to imagine any other possible reality as being realistic other than the one they live in. However, when it comes to Matriarchy you are completely blindfolded, not knowing truly what it is nor where it will take you, it could be a world a love or it could be a world that is no different than the one you live in. The fact remains that men have for centuries kept women in cages and have done whatever they please without no one being able to stop them besides other men, women are partially to blame for this for allowing themselves to be dependant on men, oppression and subjugation has been the cost of this and yet it is fine for you because you are a man, and no matter how good nor sympathetic of a man you may be, you do not know, you will never know what its like to carry the suffering of all the women that came before you and all the women that are suffering now...good women, women that have never in any way violated a m

James Alpha 5 years ago

While I agree with what most of this article says, I am...let's say "uncomfortable" as I can't think of a better word at this moment with the word "feminize" men and male societies. I believe in masculinity and femininity working together can work as well. True, masculinity is usually based in destruction and femininity in creation, but think about this for a moment: without destruction, there can be no creation.

My point is, you're making men out to be completely and utterly evil just because their men. Well, I've forgotten, but who were the one's who usually fought for the rights of others? It wasn't women, it wasn't children, and it wasn't the elderly. It was men who were strong enough mentally, physicially, emotionally, and psychologically to throw off their chains as well as their families' or people's chains.

I agree that there are many problems in society, created by a number of things, but gender equality isn't going to fix these problems. We need to stop looking at the quick and easy answer and realize something that should be very obvious to all of us: we aren't done evolving. Before we can become better, we will have to become an entirely new species, and at that time, gender equality isn't going to be much of an issue seeing as how it will be thousands, possibly millions, of years in the future.

I don't agree with assault, rape, or murder of women, but neither do I agree with false domestic violence, rape, and murder charges against men who happened to be close to that woman. While i believe that the majority of the time the police catch the right guy, you have to remember one thing: they always assume it's a man who did it.

That little tidbit to me is offensive and i for one would like a little more credit. I've never harmed a woman in all my years and I don't know a single guy that has, nor does anyone in my family. I don't deny that it happens - how feminists deny that female-to-male violence occurs - but I don't agree with wrongly attacking some man based on the fact that he was a man and he knew the woman that he attacked.

To sum it up - because I feel like I went off the rails there for a moment - I don't agree with your sumation of "feminizing" culture is the right thing. No, I believe that masculinity and femininity can survive working side by side without any gender issues if politics and religion would get out of it. Feminizing culture gives the power to women, and with the scales tipped so far in one direction, that will corrupt as it always does. Power corrupts, and with this sort of "feminine is good, masculinity is evil" mentality is what will end up with men in cages while women are free to run around, doing whatever they please without anyone to stop them. There is a reason why masculinity was created, it was created to balance femininity just as femininity was created to balance femininity. Take one away, the other has power and it destroys the whole table of power, killing the human race in the process.

Author

William Bond 5 years agofrom England

Thank you Bard

Steve Andrews 5 years agofrom Lisbon, Portugal

I have voted up for this hub too, William, and am sharing at Facebook!

hubber088 5 years agofrom Baltimore, MD

In this day and age social and communication skills are perhaps the most cherished of skills. Physical agression really has no place in society unless sports are involved.

Author

William Bond 5 years agofrom England

Hi Earth Angel,

Yes, I think Professor Stephen Hawkings is right that man will finally destroy himself, if he continues to rule our planet. It is only the empowerment of women that can save us.

Author

William Bond 5 years agofrom England

Hi Kathleen,

Yes, in Britain on average, two women die every week, killed by their male partners. It is tough for women living with men.

Earth Angel 5 years ago

GREAT Hub William and Pamela! I agree with your premise; anytime the pendulum swings too far in the other direction, key elements are lost as well!

Hopefully we are awakening to a more balanced and sensible approach where the strengths of both sexes are appreciated! And our deep connection to Nature renewed!

Yes to Kathleen Cochran above as well! I number one cause of death among pregnant women is at the hand of the father of their unborn child!

Profession Stephen Hawking wrote recently, "It is time to leave this planet." His premise is that we have gone beyond the tipping point and the only possible way mankind will survive is to find another planet! I so admire his work; I'm working to make him wrong!

Thank you William and Pamela for your continued dialogs with a more sensible approach to making the earth a better place to inhabit always!

On that same note, may you have a wonderful Season of Thanks-Living! Blessings always, Earth Angel!

Kathleen Cochran 5 years agofrom Atlanta, Georgia

Boy, did you say a mouthful. Statistically, the biggest danger to a woman between the ages of 15 and 50 is the man in her life who is closest to her. Myself, I'm married to a wonderful man who would walk through fire for me. But I'm lucky.

Empowering women at every level of our society is the only way to change this statistic.

Author

William Bond 5 years agofrom England

Thank you Martie, for your comments.

Personally I am uncomfortable with the concept of man the protector, because the people that men have to protect women from, is other men. Men are by far the most dangerious animal on the planet.

I think the origins of the patriarchal society is that men in the past used violence against women to oppress them. To change this, boys have to be taught from an early age that it is not all right to assault women. It is a good thing nowadays that women are demanding that men who assault or rape women are put into jail.

I think the biggest problem in our world is male aggression and violence. This is why we need the feminine to be more empowered, so people can learn how to get things done, without aggressive force.

Martie Coetser 5 years agofrom South Africa

wabond, this is an insightful and objective view on feminism and I agree with every statement you have made. Of course it is silly to suggest that men and women are equal in everything and of course men and women are obviously different from each other.

I call myself a feminis not because I want to overpower any man – to the contrary, I want to work shoulder to shoulder with him, controlling my side of the business just as good as he controls his side, to eventually ensure one phenomenal achievement. Some things can be done more successful by women, and vice versa. On their own both genres can’t reach the approachable heights of any undertaking, but together they can move mountains.

I call myself a feminis because I demand to be respected and appreciated for the woman I am. Studies proved that men who are not able to respect and appreciate women, are chauvinists who believe women should be seen and not heard, except those who are able to make them feel superior.

Now this brings us to the nerve of the whole issue. Both women and men demand respect and appreciation but IN ADDITION women want to be treated like women and men want to be treated like men. Now exactly how do we reckon a wo/man is supposed to be treated like a wo/man? Of course men would like to feel strong and powerful - the protectors - and women wants to feel sensitive and vulnerable taking care of the more sensitive and vulnerable, but then SAVE under the PROTECTION of men.

We need only to look around us to realise that too many men are not protectors, but attackers and destroyers, forcing too many women to be strong protectors as well as sensitive and vulnerable caretakers. Why do we see so many male ‘attackers’ and only a few true protectors? We women are so fed-up being protectors of ourselves, our children and our interests, that we are declaring war on all levels of society.

Thank you, wabond, for the opportunity to share my view on feminism, and again, thanks for this insightful hub.

Author

William Bond 5 years agofrom England

Thank you Kathleen for your comments. Though my friend Pamela Suffield helped me in explaining what i was trying to say.

Yes, I agree that political commentators do tend to underestimate the female vote. In Britain after WW2 it was exspected that Churchill would win the election, and everyone was surpried when labour won, promising social reform. It was probably the fact that the labour policies had a great appeal to women. The same is true with Margaret Thatcher, she won three elections in a row, and again the female vote probably had a big influence in this. The same was true for Tony Blair when he also won three elections, labour at the time had far more female MPs than did the Conservitives. It has only been recently that political commentators are beginning to recognize the importance of the female vote.

Kathleen Cochran 5 years agofrom Atlanta, Georgia

What an interesting hub - and to be written by a man! You make some very good points in a well-organized way. It's interesting to note as an Englisman that Ken Follett suggests the British gave women the vote after WWI in order to offset the number of labor class soldiers returning from war with the intent to throw most of those in Parliament out of office. At first, only married women who were homeowners (or their husbands were) were given the vote, according to Follett, assuming they would vote as their husbands.

I was so frustrated in the U.S. when Hilary Clinton and Barak Obama were both seeking their party's nomination for president and people talked about them both representing a minority. Women are not and never have been a minority in America. I was heartened recently though to hear a political pundant point out that elections in the US are determined by women because they are in the majority. There's power and there's power. We do have some.